Five Georgia Perimeter College nursing students who participated last year in a summer immersion program at Emory University will continue their nursing education at Emory this fall—with two of them going directly into a doctoral program.

All five graduated from GPC’s nursing program this spring and will have their tuition covered by a National Institutes of Health grant through the Bridges to Baccalaureate program.

Alexa Stewart and Udia Otuguor have been accepted into the doctoral program at Emory University’s Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing. They were eligible for doctoral studies because they had completed bachelor degrees in other disciplines before entering GPC’s nursing program in 2013. 

The other three nursing grads, Brittany Freeman, Johnny Hardeman and Roxana Chicas, have been accepted to Emory’s bachelor of nursing degree program.

Otuguor is excited about moving into her Ph.D. studies at Emory. She intends to research the impact of technology on nursing practice and education.

 “My research internship in the summer of 2014 at the Emory School of Nursing further fueled my interest in research and the desire to obtain a Ph.D.,” she says. “And meeting with and listening to the stories of active researchers and doctorate students were quite inspiring.”

The Bridges to Baccalaureate program offers nursing students a seamless transition from GPC to Emory and is geared to producing more doctoral students who are prepared as nurse scientists/researchers. The program is funded by a five-year, $900,000 NIH grant.

Bridges to Baccalaureate seeks to increase the pool of underrepresented students who are prepared for careers in research. Emory and Georgia Perimeter are the only institutions in Georgia selected to receive the grant.

Dr. Jackie Williams, associate chair of GPC’s nursing program, is implementing the program at Georgia Perimeter. The second group of Bridges to Baccalaureate students has just been selected. They are: Tessy Adepoju, Melissa Douglas, Sarah Febres Cordero and Jasmine Thomas.